


Darling, I want to eat you up

by Baryshnikov



Series: Crossing the red-stained veil [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Attempted Murder, Cannibalism Play, M/M, Obsession, Possessive Tom Riddle, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, Violent Thoughts, what even is love?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:09:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom has been watching Harry for a long time, just watching, and waiting, andwanting.





	1. Chapter 1

Tom watched as Harry ate. 

They were at dinner and the entire hall was filled up the brim with people, spilling over the edges with noise and clamour, but Tom could see nothing aside Harry. He sat there, alone in the crowd, his fingers peeling fruit, and his mouth moving, talking to people who weren’t Tom. 

Tom didn’t mind.

Except he did. 

Oh, he _really_ did. 

There were many things that Tom could claim to have, many people with his name etched into their skin, but Harry wasn't one of them. Harry wasn’t his, at least, not _officially_. 

Perhaps, it was obvious. 

Perhaps, from any glance, anyone would think that Harry was fluttering as a butterfly does on the open air, flitting between one person and other, not yet decided which one he would choose. But he would settle soon enough, Tom would make sure of it. Not only that, but Harry would settle on him, as a butterfly does on a buddleia.

Settle on him, and drink from him, and die for him. 

It was the lifecycle of the world. To be used up was everyone’s eventual end, unless, of course, they took themselves off the track, and flung themselves with all the vigour they could manage deep into the void where there was nothing but the sound of screaming. 

That was where Tom lingered. 

If anyone asked, he was there, sitting between the shrieking static because he wanted to be. But if anyone could look inside his head, and see through even the thickest walls, they’d understand; he was there because he couldn’t get out. 

Because there was something wrong with him.

Some _insidious_ thing _inside_ him.

And he couldn’t get it out. 

Once, it hadn’t mattered. Once, when he was young, he wouldn’t have cared what was hollowing out his insides. But now he did. Now, that something Tom didn’t understand had started to crawl its way through his arteries. From there, it tore holes in his lungs and sharpened its claws on the edge of his brain, but, worst of all, it twisted his stomach. All but caught it in a corkscrew and dragged it around and around and around. 

Tom rubbed his eyes. 

No one had noticed that he was getting distracted again. 

It was happening more and more. 

Soon, the filler for friends that he surrounded himself with would notice, and then the braver ones would accuse him of hypocrisy. They would glare at him for indulging the things he chastised them for, and recalcitrance towards him would start to stain their tongues.

And that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

Least of all, the poor person who’d find what was left of the ones who dared to articulate what they were all thinking, and Tom _knew_ what they were thinking, it was easier than asking. 

Most of them didn’t even notice when he was inside their heads. 

Neither did Harry. 

But Tom wanted _him_ to notice. 

As in poor taste, as it would be to do, Tom wanted to scrawl his name all over the insides of Harry’s head. Draw it again and again until it was all he could see in his dreams; the sharp edge of a smile and the corner of a name scratched so deep into Harry’s psyche that he finally realised how much they were _meant_ to mean to each other. 

Harry glanced towards him. 

_Like he knew._

For only a second, their eyes met, and the world just melted like candle wax in a sticky summer. People dissolved as if they were salt in the water, just vanishing before Tom’s eyes as Harry watched him, unblinking. Even his fingers had stilled, one buried to the knuckle in an orange.

Tom had never been jealous of fruit before. 

Though now he was. 

And all he could think about was sinking his fingers into Harry like he was no more than a piece of fruit himself. So gentle in the beginning and so rough by the end. How he could slide the full length of his own fingers under Harry’s tongue, and push his nails into the softness that lay beneath. 

Tom could make him choke. 

Or whine. 

He could make him cry with pleasure.

Or with pain. 

And that was so much power. 

_So much fucking power. _

But Harry looked away. His gaze turning across the room, following the sounds of smiles and the sight of laughter, and with it, his fingers continued to push and press and pry at the fruit. He pulled at the skin until it lay on his plate forgotten and began to drag apart the segments like they were pieces of Tom’s very heart.

As he watched from afar, able to see but not intervene Tom could feel his whole world begin to tauten, like a rope pulled so much it might snap if you touched it. Tom swallowed. Everything from his lungs, to his skin, felt impossibly tight, as though all his organs were now a size too small. 

It made him feel sick.

Dizzy. 

Oxygen starved. 

It was pathetic, really. Weak. And he wanted nothing more than to shove his fucking hand down his fucking throat and wrench out his lungs in one. And he now knew there was not a single of piece of his insides that, if given the choice, he wouldn’t remove. For who even needed a _heart_ anyway? 

Was use did a heart have in a heartless world?

Because this wasn’t about _love_, no matter what other people would say. No matter how many looks he got from his subordinates. This wasn't fucking love. This was more. They simply did not, _could not_, understand the complexities of what this was and what it wasn’t.

And no matter what they said, this was too violent to be love.

Too vicious.

Love alone could not sustain the itch that was burning under Tom's skin, forcing needles through every vein, and pinpricks into every nerve. There was not an inch of skin that did not feel like it had been rubbed wretched raw, scraped down to the bone with a scourer until every, little, nerve ending was exposed and abuzz with feeling. 

The monster that was under Tom’s skin knew what it was that he felt, but it wasn’t inclined to tell him; that would make them friends. So, instead, it only amplified the itching until it was _unbearable_. It ate him up from the inside out. It chewed on his tendons and cut through the ligaments as though they were nothing but carrots. 

It mocked him for his want. 

For his need. 

For simply craving Harry Potter.

And it ached. That something _inside_ him ached so badly; it was almost a throb, a continuous pulsating that made him repeatedly stretch his fingers and clench his hands. Watching with more and more intensity as too many people leaned too close to _his_ Harry, their hands wondering as spiders do in the darkest corners. 

Those other people liked Harry. 

Those other people wanted Harry. 

_But they couldn't have him._

Because Harry was Tom's, whether he knew it or not. Whether he understood just what he did to him, or whether it past him by. Harry didn't look like he knew how dry Tom’s mouth became when he began to eat the segment of orange. Sliding it between his lips and crushing it between his molars, before swallowing. Tom swallowed with him, but not because he was eating.

Harry just made him restless. 

And just _seeing_ him was enough for Tom’s feet to tap on the floor, the noise disguised by the racket that everybody else made. That was all it took for him to roll his lip between his teeth and crack his knuckles enough times to make Malfoy look at him with an eyebrow raised. 

It wasn’t good manners. 

But there was no time for good manners when the fantasies were getting fuller. Thicker. Fatter. Every time he watched Harry lick his fingers Tom’s visions of what they could be together elaborated, unfurling like a fern in the rain, and reminding him of _exactly_ what he wanted to do to Harry.

What he had _always_ wanted to do to Harry. 

But had to put up with doing to other people.

They weren't as fun, or as good, but they served a purpose. They scratched that itch that slid just beneath the surface of his skin. 

They stopped the starving with no strings attached. 

Or, at least, no strings Tom cared about. 

And, in a way, they were decent. Useful. And Tom would be lying if he said he didn't get a sick satisfaction for watching the high and mighty, goldleaf, snobs get down on their fucking knees for him. 

Only for him.

Malfoy was the best to look at, and fortunately the best with his mouth too. He might have been a thoroughbred, but he still couldn’t resist the allure of mixed blood when it was dressed in such a pretty skin. Tom’s pretty skin to be precise. Even if, in public, Malfoy espoused some moral high ground by virtue of his status, in private the flex of his fingers and the moans from his mouth said he was as depraved in his tastes as Tom himself.

And Tom liked that.

Until he didn’t.

Until Harry had started to seep through the cracks and form his face where someone else’s should be. 

Tom wouldn't deny it was getting harder and harder to pretend that Malfoy was something he wanted anymore. Malfoy must already knew that. For he was ever so _accommodating_ recently; happy to throw himself away for the graze of Tom's mouth against his jaw, and murmurings of twisted love whispered in his ear. But he must _know_ he was really just a body for Tom to dig his fingers into, just bones and muscles and skin for Tom to mould to his use.

And Malfoy was very mouldable.

Suggestible. 

Useable.

A real _thing_ for Tom to get his teeth into, not caring if he left behind all the colours that meant bad things, as long as it satisfied the ache inside him. As long as the feeling of emptiness was satiated that was all that mattered, even if Malfoy was choking, or worse, complaining that _Harry_ wasn’t his name. 

Tom didn’t care. 

He wanted Harry, not Malfoy. 

_He wanted him so fucking badly._

So much so, that even sitting here, surrounded by _everyone_, the _want_ was still starting to chafe at his skin. His sleeves were too rough on his wrists, and the collar too stiff on his neck, like a hand permanently wrapped around his throat, the thumb pressing into his jugular vein until he could barely breathe.

And Harry was still turned away.

Still eating his orange, one segment at a time. 

The juice had glazed his lips and wetted his fingers enough that they looked _indecent_, and Tom very much wanted to hold them. Break them. Just snap them in two like a celery stick.

When Harry spun his tongue around those fingers, taking his time to catch Tom’s eye as he did so, Tom could feel the heat begin to spiral down his neck, creeping under his collar and beginning to curl itself into an impossible knot. And the longer he watched, the more the heat began to coil, until it sat, so heavy, right in the base of his stomach, like a snake was sitting there, squirming and squeezing him until he gritted his teeth. 

No one noticed.

Not even as Tom tightened his grip on his fork. Needing something firm to ground him, something small and solid to stop him putting his knife straight through his femoral artery just to be distracted from the throbbing inside him, and the clamping of every single one of his muscles.

He was like a dog really.

A fucking _mongrel_ wanting something to gnaw on. That was all he needed, a diversion from the way that Harry swallowed. Just a little thing that he could lick and suck and bite, just something to do with his tongue instead of having it hanging limp between his lips.

It was no use there. 

Not when it could be between Harry’s thighs. For there was no better image in the world than thinking what his tongue could do to Harry. How it could slide and swirl and suck in _all_ the right ways to get Harry on his back with his hands in Tom’s hair, and his mouth making the shapes of his name. 

And _his_ name alone. 

Tom could practically hear it echoing, bouncing through his skull.

Until Harry smiled straight at him, as though this room were empty, and it was just the two of them left in the entire world. He had almost finished the orange, and now his fingers were nervous; tapping themselves out a tune that no one could hear.

Though Harry had no reason to be nervous. 

This wasn’t the first time they’d played a silent game.

Nor was it the second.

Or the third.

Or even the fourth. 

They had played this charade over and over and over again. Each and every time going just that little bit further; pushing that line until it bent and snapped and suddenly there would be nothing holding Harry back from what he so obviously wanted.

Because everyone wanted Tom. 

He knew they did. However much they tried to hide it, their eyes stung him like the tendrils of a jellyfish might. A single sharp spike in his skin, a shot of adrenaline followed by loathing. 

He didn’t want _them_. 

He only wanted Harry.

Tom wanted to bury himself in the crook of Harry’s neck. Just lying there and breathing _him_ in, swallowing down his scent until there was nothing else inside of his lungs. And he would be lying if he said he didn’t want to mouth at his neck; grazing his teeth along every tendon and wondering what it would be like to rip Harry’s throat out in one bite. 

What it would be like for that monster that was eating him up to come out and play. 

Harry just smiled again and glanced between Tom and the door.

Today, Tom would snap that pretty, little, line of decency. 

Today, he would take what he wanted. 

Today, he would finally get a taste of Harry Potter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure what that was so if you got through it, congratulations.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I didn't know what this was before, I know even less now.

Harry stood.

Tom did as well. 

There was a finality in doing that, a decisiveness that he was _actually_ going to get what he had been wanting for so fucking long. But even that didn’t stop that jolting of Tom’s heart at every breath he took. If anything, it made it worse. It made every inhale feel as though it may be the last time his lungs held oxygen in their pores, the last time that every organ inside him worked as it should.

For everything was coming apart at the seams.

Hungering and hating and needing and abhorring and loving and loathing, it was all pressing against the stitches in his heart, forcing them further and further apart, stretching them until they were gaping; a deep, cavernous hole inside him, swallowing itself over and over.

It was fucking terrifying. 

But that slow, squeezing, swallow felt so… _good_. Being turned over and over; tossed through this… 

This… 

Thing, it was like being a ship, wrecked at sea, and it just felt so fucking good. 

Each and every roll of the waves inside him, reminding Tom _just_ how much he _wanted_ Harry. How much he wanted to touch him, sink his fingers into his skin and scratch his name across the surface. He wanted to mark him so _intimately_ that no one would ever think twice about looking at him. Tom wanted to thread himself through every inch of Harry, paint him like a masterpiece, or scoop up his every fibre as though it were clay and sculpt him into his magnum opus. 

A thing so divine that even God would cry at its creation. 

Tom blinked. 

Harry was still watching, a half-smile still placed upon his mouth, a gift that Tom would finally be able to take and take and take, and never, ever, have to see anyone else have was what his. 

He followed when Harry began to walk towards the door. Abandoning the conversation that his dependants had been having all around him. He didn’t care, even if they did, for they weren’t interesting anymore. 

Perhaps once. 

But not now. 

All of them had lost their shine, even Malfoy. Nowadays, their opinions were too much like his own, and their actions mere imitations of his. Tom had breathed out, and they had breathed in the spores that spilled from his tongue; they had swallowed the promises, however insincere they were, and now they made themselves in his image. 

As though narcissism would win him over. 

It wouldn’t. 

For originality, individualism, and distinctiveness were far, _far_, more interesting. The thought of someone watching, and _not_ knowing what he was, _that_ was the thrill, and that was the way that Harry looked at him. 

Hungering. 

Wanting. 

Desiring. 

Not like the others. Their gaze was reverent, obsequious in a way that just grated against his skin, slicing through every layer of patience until Tom had none left to give. But when Harry looked, oh, _that_ was different. Even when they were nowhere near each other, Tom could feel the prickliness of Harry’s personality, and it was _so_ much more alluring than another strawberry-stained convention-conforming sycophant, like all those people he called his friends.

_They_ did not make his chest ache, and his hands quiver no matter how much he tried to keep them still. _They_ did not fill his throat with sand until it rubbed the red skin raw. _They_ did nothing to make him want them. 

So, he followed Harry, for sake of curiosity, morbid fascination, and no small amount of desperation. That overwhelming, but no less pathetic, need to be noticed, to be coveted, craved, _desired_ by someone who did not know how much his brain was spoiled with monsters. 

They ate away at him. 

And in turn, he would eat away at Harry Potter. 

So, Tom followed. 

Not too close and not too far, enough to see where Harry was going to go, but not enough to look like he was interested. He still felt _their_ eyes on the back of his neck though, like pretty pins pushed into a doll; they were watching him. 

They were finally noticing. 

And, what a time to notice, when the finale had already begun. 

Someone said something, probably Lestrange, he always had _plenty_ of nice things to say. Any other time, Tom might have tied his tongue into knots right then and there. Not that anyone would be able to _prove_ it was him, but they’d all _know_. Now though, now he’d let it slide. Let him think he was safe. And then strike, like a snake, when Lestrange was alone and exposed, and his silver tongue would no longer sound so clever. 

For any of them could say what they liked when he wasn’t there, and if they wanted to say it to his face, then they could. They could spit out every, single, word like it was an unforgivable, and he’d listen.

And he’d smile. 

And he’d break their fucking neck.

They were still watching, though their glares were losing their sharpness; the edges wearing down as they realised, he didn’t care what they thought. The only one who still stared like it mattered was Malfoy. _He_ was watching like his looks could kill, but they couldn’t; Malfoy was just a kitten. 

He didn’t have any claws. 

He didn’t have anything but money, and _everyone_ had money these days. It was hardly the novelty, even Lestrange with his spikey little tongue had money that he would throw at Tom if Tom wanted it. 

The sooner they learnt they weren’t special, the better. 

Harry had gone. 

No one noticed. 

Tom followed. 

No one really noticed. 

It was cooler in the corridor, no bodies exuding great pools of heat, but Tom was still too hot. It was a scratching sort of heat, the kind that felt like sandpaper across his skin, and was chafing every time _anything_ can into contact with his body. The bones in his shoulder had been rasped so much by his shirt that they were practically poking through the flesh.

He was honestly surprised there was no blood on his shirt. 

There should be blood. 

Blood from the barbed fabric of his shirt cutting into his back, blood on his hands from how hard he was clenching them, even blood in his mouth from the pressure he was putting on his tongue. Tom’s teeth were buried in it, right at the tip; he could bite it off if he wanted, as easily as you bite through a steak.

But that would be a waste of a tongue. 

One that he was very much hoping to put to good use in Harry’s mouth, and along his neck, over every rib and down, down, down until his name was the only thing in Harry’s mouth. He wanted to make Harry squirm and writhe like a spider did when Tom held its legs, all for him, all _because_ of him. 

Deep down, in the very pit of Tom’s stomach, he wanted to be the only thing in Harry’s entire world. That one constant that would never go away, shining forever like a star in the sky, as intense, as gorgeous as the fucking sun, lighting up Harry’s world in a constant glow of brilliant white. 

Tom was catching up with Harry. 

So close now that he could almost touch him, the _real_ him, and not the half-formed fantasy that had crept into his dreams. Those dreams were torture in their own way. They’d started how any dreams might start, on the very edge of sleep, when the world is still there, but it’s hazy, like staring through a pane of glass during heavy rain. 

And then the sensations began. 

The tug of Harry’s fingers in his skin. 

The warmth of Harry’s smile at his neck.

The sharpness of Harry’s heel digging into his spine. 

It was always Harry; blurred and warped and inhuman, but Harry, nonetheless. Those dreams were starting to turn sticky, hot, unbearable; that was the only way to describe being folded again and again into himself, wrapped in the pulsing tendrils of a creature Tom couldn’t name, but knew must be a derivative of Harry. 

No one else was as compelling. 

No one else made asphyxia feel so good. 

Just the sensation of being filled past full in every way, like being held down in the baths, choked and drowned, of being utterly and completely overwhelmed by a word that burned his tongue to say, but still made so…

So…

_Weak._

But those were just dreams, not reality. For Harry could not possibly compare to all the people Tom had had before, to all those who had curled their fingers right between his thighs and let him drag his lips where no one else would ever see. He wouldn’t tell them he only kissed them to get a taste of their rot, because, anyone he tolerated had to be a little rotten. But Tom didn’t want to _use_ Harry like he used all the others; mere vessels through which he had tried, and always failed, to find meaning in his madness. 

Finding bliss between their lips and paradise between their shoulder blades had become an excuse for not finding out why he was putrid inside. 

Under his skin, Tom could feel the decay, and other people could taste it when they took his fingers in their mouth. They said his skin was sickly sweet like an overripened fruit; they said they were scared of whatever was inside him.

And Tom liked it like that. 

He liked it when they did what he wanted just because he _wanted_ it, and he loved it when they were servile, and he _adored_ it when they let him do whatever he wanted to them. Let him search between their ribs for something meaningful, let him dip his fingers into their collarbones like they were hiding secrets in the hollows, let him hold their necks.

And squeeze. 

Let him scare them.

Really fucking scare them. 

As he walked a few steps behind Harry, close enough to feel the heat of his skin and to be reminded that he was burning as hot as if a star was growing inside his ribcage. Tom was still holding the knife; he could feel it in his palm. 

Hot metal. A heavy, heavy, weight. Firm. Strong. Solid. 

He could grab Harry’s shoulder and shove that blunt little blade up through his chin, and he could kiss him, between the blood and the steel. Or, he could press it into Harry Potter’s stomach, through layer and layer of hot, pink flesh and watch him bleed out.

For there was something so _erotic_ about someone dying right in front him while he did nothing. 

To taste death on someone’s lips was surely to taste heaven; perhaps that was where Harry came in, because who was more stained with death than the boy who had come back from the dead? Perhaps that was the attraction, or perhaps it was far more mundane. 

That Harry looked at him and did not see that there was a monster wrapping itself around his wrists, coiling around his neck and forcing itself down his throat. 

Harry did not see. 

All Harry saw was how long Tom had waited for him. 

How long he had watched him. 

How long he had wanted him. 

Harry turned around, as he still walked away, just to smile at him, and Tom could feel his heart beginning to flutter, to crawl its way out of the pupa that Tom would rather it had stayed in, because, it hurt.

It hurt so fucking much. 

And fluttering turned to pounding. 

And pounding turned to throbbing. 

And throbbing turned to that _ache_. 

Insatiable, it gnawed on the lining of his stomach, biting over and over again into every organ of his body, leaving nothing but teeth marks in the softness. He was practically eating himself. Devouring himself from the inside out just as he wanted to devour Harry. 

Just have him. 

All to himself. 

To touch and taste whenever he wanted. 

But Tom didn’t want to kiss him. No, kissing would never be enough anymore, now he wanted to _eat_ him up, roll Harry all over his tongue, curl his tongue around him, crush him with the pressure of his mouth and just…

Just…

Swallow him.

Just for a moment 

They were getting closer to Harry’s room and all Tom could do was watch Harry’s sticky, sticky fingers glistening in the half-light. He wanted to bite them in half, put his teeth straight through the bone just to understand what it was that made Harry so fucking sweet. 

So fucking lovely.

That, Tom wanted to kiss him until they both suffocated. 

They were barely in the room before Tom shoved Harry against the wall, his hand on his throat. He was pulled to him, like a moon in a planet’s gravitational field, pulled into orbit and unable to ever get out again. Not that he wanted to. No. No Tom never wanted to fucking leave this moment ever again. Nor did Harry, if the flush on his neck was anything to go by.

Tom swallowed.

His hand was warm, but Harry’s neck was warmer. A tight hotness strained through every muscle; he was tense. This entire moment was tense, overwrought with too many emotions that words themselves couldn’t express. Nothing could express the way he felt. That shallow curl in Tom’s stomach, delving deeper, like a fishhook in the ocean. He swallowed again, and, ever so gently, Tom clenched his fingers, and he revelled in the sound of Harry’s breath catching in his throat. The slight intake as his air was restricted. 

It was sweet. 

Like Harry was getting the first glimpse of the things inside Tom’s head, the pretty, nasty, little thing that was just _millimetres_ beneath his skin.

Tom rolled his hand.

He could feel the plod of Harry’s pulse turning to a sprint, like the moment before a train comes into the station; and it’s going so fast that you think it’s almost impossible to stop. Tom always liked to stand too close to the edge, so close he could scrape his fingers on the metalwork, and feel the air whizzing past him, the gush of the wind practically knocking him onto the tracks. 

That was what it felt like to hold Harry’s pulse. 

It felt like power.

And it felt fucking incredible. 

If he was younger, stupider, Tom would have said that this was love. But this was so much more than love, this was… _addiction_. He was hooked on Harry worse than any addict, but just as covetous of his supply. There was nothing that Tom wanted to do without him, even if it was just lying there, on the bed, on the floor. The wood of the floorboards digging into his back would mean nothing if Harry was lying beside him; his head resting on Tom’s shoulder and Tom could run his hand through his hair.

And pretend he was normal. 

But he wasn’t _normal_.

And this wasn’t fucking love. 

Love did not involve wanting to smash someone’s face into the wall again and again and again. Love was not strangling and suffocating; love wasn’t choking on his own sobs because such an enormous, empty, space inside him that nothing in this entire fucking world could fill, other than Harry. 

“You know, you can kiss me, right?”

Tom blinked slowly.

Harry was still watching, and though his voice was strained and ever so distant like listening to someone shout at him underwater. Harry wasn’t scared though. Harry still wanted him, perhaps more so, for there was curiosity glazing his eyes; fascination dancing through them. He could see the nasty thing that lurked behind Tom’s smile and he wasn’t scared. 

He wasn’t fucking scared. 

Tom shifted his hand again, feeling weak at the sound of Harry choking. 

Everything felt so weak inside him, so boneless, hardly real at all. It was though he was watching himself from across the room, all at once, inside in own body and outside. And for every second that passed, he was being buried deeper and deeper by the rush of emotions was unbearable, endorphin and norepinephrine and dopamine and serotonin all squirming and screaming through his blood. A raging tide that had been held back for so long that he could stop it spilling out anymore. 

Tom kissed him. 

At first it was just grazing his lips over Harry’s, then it wasn’t. 

It was drowning, being enveloped in this dark, wet world; not knowing where he was or what he was doing. Only knowing that Harry was here, that it was Harry’s tongue and Harry’s teeth and Harry’s mouth that was on his. It was Harry’s fingers on his waist and Harry’s hands pulling him closer as though they could both just melt into the wall. 

And all at once Tom was empty and full, complete and incomplete, and desperately wanting a little more. He just wanted to touch and keep touching, to have what had always been his until he had used it up like a burning match. Used up Harry Potter until he was but ash floating out on the wind. 

But the knife between his ribs was the feeling of _other_ people’s burning handprints left behind; he could smell the perfumes and the colognes that were ingrained into Harry’s clothes, and he could taste them all over Harry’s mouth. He was not the first person to taste Harry’s saliva on his tongue. 

And Tom hated it. 

Hated knowing that he’d had to share. That there were others before him that had got to touch and taste and torture what was _his_ and his alone. But there would be no more, because, whether Harry liked it or not, Tom was going to be his last.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for this taking so long to be updated, and I know this one was supposed to be the last chapter, but I had some trouble adapting to my old writing style, so I'm trying to ease myself back into it gently, and, as a result, there's still one more (far more substantial) chapter to come.

Tom dragged his mouth away from Harry’s own, though not before his lungs were burning and he had to lean a hand against the wall just to stop himself collapsing with the immensity of everything he was feeling; that burning, spinning thrill that was crawling through every blood vessel, opening each one up until it was impossibility wide and gushing with blood. He just couldn’t remember how to fucking breathe anymore. 

And he didn’t want to learn. 

He was happy here, his palm pressed against the cold, solid, wall; though his body was still sinking into Harry’s. The softness of his thighs pressed against Tom’s own, and the smoothness of Harry’s fingers as they held onto his waist. It was lovely. 

So fucking lovely. 

And Tom just wanted to press into him, push further into his body, feeling the hard and the soft. He just wanted to melt into the fabric of Harry’s skin and inhabit it; he wanted to curl himself between Harry’s ribs and tangle himself into every single organ in his body, seeping into his heart and oozing his lungs until Harry was choking on him, overcome with these feelings just as a cell is to a pathogen.

_And he could._

Tom could so easily keep Harry against the wall, his hand wrapped firmly around his throat and their lips so close together that the temptation would be irresistible. And Tom could kiss him and kiss him and kiss him; until neither of them could breathe, until all the fucking oxygen in the world was used to fuel this combustion, until there was nothing inside Harry that wasn’t a part of Tom. 

Tom squeezed his eyes shut and tried to feel the grit of the wall beneath his fingers, and the handle of the knife against his palm; he tried to feel something that would ground him long enough to get his bearing, to get his head straight, and to think before he did something stupid and impulsive—something that would prevent him ever getting to do this again. He just needed to just count to fucking ten.

So, he took a deep breath. 

One.

Two. 

Three. 

Four.

He could still feel Harry breathing. They were too close not to. It was nice to feel the inflation and deflation of his lungs and the warmth just radiating off of him, like he was a scorching star; like he could sear and singe and blister; like he could leave marks on Tom’s fingers that would let _everyone_ know what they did. 

Five. 

Six.

Seven.

Tom wanted to kiss Harry again, to taste every corner of his mouth, and then rip them apart with his teeth. The small, uncontrolled and vivaciously sadistic part of him wanted to tear Harry open and bury his fingers inside; curl them around Harry’s bones and lace them inside his organs until there would _always_ be some part of him underneath Harry’s skin. And although he couldn’t say it out loud, Tom knew, deep down, what he wanted to do, and it wasn’t very pretty.

All he fucking needed was some sick act of depraved love, sculpted from Harry’s pretty mouth on his, and Harry’s tongue dragged out from between his lips with the sharp edges of Tom’s teeth.

It would be so fucking beautiful. 

Eight.

Nine.

His fingers were itching now, aching to just touch and touch and touch. To feel every inch of Harry’s skin, to explore every ridge and gully, even to sink right down beneath the surface, to slide between every bone and muscle until he could feel the grotesque mechanics of Harry _pulsating_ around him.

He fucking wanted to get _inside_ him. 

Ten. 

Tom opened his eyes. 

Harry was watching him.

Those big green eyes like vegetating ponds that Tom wanted to drown in. How bad could it be to drown in something so beautiful, to feel the algae as it spread through his lungs and choked him from the inside out? After all, did a fish really like it was drowning when the plants absorbed all the oxygen and their deaths were mere collateral to the inevitable?

But Tom did not want to die. 

Not now. 

Not ever. 

But that didn’t mean he was above watching other people die. 

Above killing just to rid himself of this one intoxicating _weakness_ that was eating him up from the inside out. So, ever so gently, he spread his fingers wider, gripping as much of Harry’s throat as his hands would allow. Beneath his thumb, the pulse still racing, all but pounding against the skin, as though there was a creature inside of Harry that banging and banging to get out. 

He could kill Harry now. 

He didn’t even need magic to do it. Just the jerk of his hand would be enough, a violent fucking rip to the left and everything that kept Harry alive would twist and jerk and fail, and that would be the end of Harry Potter. 

But that would be such a shame, like an addict throwing away their fix. He couldn’t kill Harry, not until he had a viable replacement, and no one had ever come even remotely close to replacing him. None of the others had the knowingness in their smiles, all the others were scared as though they knew what they were getting into.

Harry didn’t.

Harry just stared at Tom with those big round eyes; waiting to get whatever this was supposed to be, started. Well, if he wanted to get this started; if Harry wanted to know the things that lurked under Tom’s skin, then Tom would be a fucking gentleman and show him every single one. 

Without a thought to morals, Tom clenched his hands and squeezed Harry’s throat, just the tiniest bit, his hand undulating like its movements were determined by the waves, rocking back and forth; pressure at first on the top before rolling in a great sweep down to the bottom. He smiled because this was what power was supposed to feel like—holding someone else’s life in your hands and knowing that you’re not just playing a god anymore, _you are one_. 

Harry sucked a breath between his teeth—sharp and desperate.

And wasn’t that just enlightening?

It was like a something had snapped and Tom was aware of everything around him: the heat of Harry’s skin beneath his fingers, and the rise and fall of his hand as Harry breathed, and the shape of the steak knife in his hand and how _hot_ he felt under his clothes. How constricted and itchy his skin was and how fast and loud and heavy his heart was.

Finally, he had Harry in front of him, a tangible, choking, body to do whatever he wanted to, and he was just standing there like a fucking lemon wasting the precious minutes before people would start asking questions about where they were. 

Tom let go of Harry’s throat and kissed him, hard, like he was trying to suck all the oxygen out of his lungs; not bothering to even pretend to be gentle anymore. After all, gentleness was for love and sweetness and romance, and this wasn’t a fucking romance; if anything, it was horror story written with the apexes of his teeth embedded into Harry’s lip—pulling on it until it was bruised and abused and Harry was all but _whining_ for something more, like a puppy left out in the rain. 

_Oh, this was going to be so fucking fun._


End file.
